Truth For A Change
8.06.2006
Truth For A Change with Joe Friendly
Truth For A Change with Joe Friendly
When President Fidel Castro announced on July 31, 2006 that he felt so weakened by illness and overwork that he was going to step down, at least temporarily, it occurred to me that what I had written in 1973 in my not well published manuscript, The Birthdate Phenomenon, would be of considerable importance to him. [In the 70's I published myself in Xerox of 300 copies, submitting a copy to my alma mater Caltech's library, for example, and trying to sell it in Berkeley, California in a couple bookstores, but giving away lots of copies.]
In particular, I had discovered that people tend to over-react on the day 2 weeks before their birthday and also the day 2 weeks before their half birthday, feeling a surprising weakness indicating a permanent deterioration of their physical and/or mental condition. Typically 2 weeks later the symptoms abate and in retrospect it is apparent there was over-reaction.
I have taken the preliminary steps to get this writing to the attention to Fidel and will keep you informed of my progress. My big wish is for Fidel to publicly announce that he has discovered this new Copernicus in the US and introduce me and my writings to the world, including my birthday theory and my plan for peaceful, but total revolution. Just the idea of his reading out loud my plan for revolution would be a huge step in that direction, the idea that for the people to be able to really control their economic system they should be owners of the corporations, and that they should wake up to the fact that our foreign policy has not been promoting democracy and freedom but the opposite.
The book I had chosen in my plan for revolution, for the entire US public to read to wake up, Killing Hope by William Blum, was similar to the choice of Osama Bin Laden announced January 2006 for waking up the American people, by the same author, Rogue Nation. Turns out Osama and me share the same birthday, March 10. William Blum's is March 6. Here is the 1973 article:
The Birthdate Phenomenon: Applications (page 145 of 1974 book manuscript)
An Important Discovery
Here's a simple but extremely important and useful discovery to come of studying the Birthdate Phenomenon.
IT TURNS OUT that people tend to go through a surprising period of unusual weakness, confusion, and anxiety for about a two week period right before their half-birthdate, that is, about two weeks before the point six months from their birthdate. There is also to be noted a similar period of weakness and anxiety right before the birthdate.
Without being aware of this birthdate effect people, and their doctors, tend to over-react to the puzzling symptoms, fearing that the sudden and inexplicable downturn in physical and/or mental.state signals some ominous deterioration of the body or mind. Often there is feared the beginnings of a nervous breakdown or other mental disorder.
It is common in such instances for the individual to be hospitalized or committed
to a mental institution. An example is Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s wife entering a mental hospital at the beginning of September 1973 because of sudden attacks of unexplainable anxiety just about two weeks before her birthdate and then released about two weeks after her birthday. Another example was the concern in China and the rest of the world in mid-December 1973 that Chairman Mao (December 26) was dying which turned out to be a false alarm.
Typically, the symptoms disappear by the birthdate or half-birthdate whether treated or not. So being aware of the birthdate effect can be quite helpful both to the individual and doctors and psychologists. Especially in cases of anxiety, once the individual is assured it will pass in two weeks the treatment need only be to take it easy for the two weeks, get plenty of sleep and rest, and to see lots of entertaining movies.
Now, to be complete, there may be some serious physical breakdown in the period of weakness and vulnerability that does require treatment, but even where surgery is required as, for example, to open a constricted artery, it is often decided to wait a couple weeks for the patient to get stronger so as to better endure the trauma of surgery.
I have come across several hundred cases of this surprising period of anxiety and confusion. Typically, in asking people their birthdate I will recognize a recently passed half-birthdate and ask if the individual went through a rough time of mental anguish, say, three or four weeks ago. “Oh yes, I sure did, it was strange, how did you know that?" is a very common kind of reply.
Exactly why there is this effect I can only speculate. Since we are dealing with a sine wave phenomenon, we would expect the effect greatest and most observable at the
180 degree and 360 degree points, corresponding to the half-birthdate and birthdate.
By analogy to other physical systems involving sine curves, the two week periods immediately before these points correspond to times of maximum dissonance, like the grating disharmony of playing two musical notes right next to each other.
Finally, I would point out that with our country in many ways having come to move backwards, things getting worse each day rather than better, and people reaching into the past for memories of better times rather than reaching into the future with plans and hope, I've begun to observe cases of weakness immediately after the birthday and half-birthdate. The cure is to get our country moving forward again, of course.
* * * * *
End of Article
In the 33 years since that writing, I have come to see this phenomenal period of weakness 2 weeks before the birthday and half-birthday a very large number of times, confirming what I had written way back. I would explain it a little better now, that there is apparently a 28-day sinusoidal biorhythm with birthday as the point between the below zero half of the sine wave and the positive half. That makes the point 2 weeks before the birthday the beginning of the descent into negativity, and 7 days later the lowest point. Birthday thus marks the ascent into positive, with the highest point 7 days later. Sorry I don't have a diagram to show you. That would make it so much easier for lots of folks to understand what I am trying to explain.
So, time will tell whether Fidel is actually provided with the above words to consider in deciding whether he over-reacted and is now feeling so much better that he can resume his presidential duties, or at least embark on some ambitious new path like promoting revolution in the US and appreciation of birthday's importance worldwide. ¶ 12:29 PM 1 comments links to this post
When President Fidel Castro announced on July 31, 2006 that he felt so weakened by illness and overwork that he was going to step down, at least temporarily, it occurred to me that what I had written in 1973 in my not well published manuscript, The Birthdate Phenomenon, would be of considerable importance to him. [In the 70's I published myself in Xerox of 300 copies, submitting a copy to my alma mater Caltech's library, for example, and trying to sell it in Berkeley, California in a couple bookstores, but giving away lots of copies.]
In particular, I had discovered that people tend to over-react on the day 2 weeks before their birthday and also the day 2 weeks before their half birthday, feeling a surprising weakness indicating a permanent deterioration of their physical and/or mental condition. Typically 2 weeks later the symptoms abate and in retrospect it is apparent there was over-reaction.
I have taken the preliminary steps to get this writing to the attention to Fidel and will keep you informed of my progress. My big wish is for Fidel to publicly announce that he has discovered this new Copernicus in the US and introduce me and my writings to the world, including my birthday theory and my plan for peaceful, but total revolution. Just the idea of his reading out loud my plan for revolution would be a huge step in that direction, the idea that for the people to be able to really control their economic system they should be owners of the corporations, and that they should wake up to the fact that our foreign policy has not been promoting democracy and freedom but the opposite.
The book I had chosen in my plan for revolution, for the entire US public to read to wake up, Killing Hope by William Blum, was similar to the choice of Osama Bin Laden announced January 2006 for waking up the American people, by the same author, Rogue Nation. Turns out Osama and me share the same birthday, March 10. William Blum's is March 6. Here is the 1973 article:
The Birthdate Phenomenon: Applications (page 145 of 1974 book manuscript)
An Important Discovery
Here's a simple but extremely important and useful discovery to come of studying the Birthdate Phenomenon.
IT TURNS OUT that people tend to go through a surprising period of unusual weakness, confusion, and anxiety for about a two week period right before their half-birthdate, that is, about two weeks before the point six months from their birthdate. There is also to be noted a similar period of weakness and anxiety right before the birthdate.
Without being aware of this birthdate effect people, and their doctors, tend to over-react to the puzzling symptoms, fearing that the sudden and inexplicable downturn in physical and/or mental.state signals some ominous deterioration of the body or mind. Often there is feared the beginnings of a nervous breakdown or other mental disorder.
It is common in such instances for the individual to be hospitalized or committed
to a mental institution. An example is Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau’s wife entering a mental hospital at the beginning of September 1973 because of sudden attacks of unexplainable anxiety just about two weeks before her birthdate and then released about two weeks after her birthday. Another example was the concern in China and the rest of the world in mid-December 1973 that Chairman Mao (December 26) was dying which turned out to be a false alarm.
Typically, the symptoms disappear by the birthdate or half-birthdate whether treated or not. So being aware of the birthdate effect can be quite helpful both to the individual and doctors and psychologists. Especially in cases of anxiety, once the individual is assured it will pass in two weeks the treatment need only be to take it easy for the two weeks, get plenty of sleep and rest, and to see lots of entertaining movies.
Now, to be complete, there may be some serious physical breakdown in the period of weakness and vulnerability that does require treatment, but even where surgery is required as, for example, to open a constricted artery, it is often decided to wait a couple weeks for the patient to get stronger so as to better endure the trauma of surgery.
I have come across several hundred cases of this surprising period of anxiety and confusion. Typically, in asking people their birthdate I will recognize a recently passed half-birthdate and ask if the individual went through a rough time of mental anguish, say, three or four weeks ago. “Oh yes, I sure did, it was strange, how did you know that?" is a very common kind of reply.
Exactly why there is this effect I can only speculate. Since we are dealing with a sine wave phenomenon, we would expect the effect greatest and most observable at the
180 degree and 360 degree points, corresponding to the half-birthdate and birthdate.
By analogy to other physical systems involving sine curves, the two week periods immediately before these points correspond to times of maximum dissonance, like the grating disharmony of playing two musical notes right next to each other.
Finally, I would point out that with our country in many ways having come to move backwards, things getting worse each day rather than better, and people reaching into the past for memories of better times rather than reaching into the future with plans and hope, I've begun to observe cases of weakness immediately after the birthday and half-birthdate. The cure is to get our country moving forward again, of course.
* * * * *
End of Article
In the 33 years since that writing, I have come to see this phenomenal period of weakness 2 weeks before the birthday and half-birthday a very large number of times, confirming what I had written way back. I would explain it a little better now, that there is apparently a 28-day sinusoidal biorhythm with birthday as the point between the below zero half of the sine wave and the positive half. That makes the point 2 weeks before the birthday the beginning of the descent into negativity, and 7 days later the lowest point. Birthday thus marks the ascent into positive, with the highest point 7 days later. Sorry I don't have a diagram to show you. That would make it so much easier for lots of folks to understand what I am trying to explain.
So, time will tell whether Fidel is actually provided with the above words to consider in deciding whether he over-reacted and is now feeling so much better that he can resume his presidential duties, or at least embark on some ambitious new path like promoting revolution in the US and appreciation of birthday's importance worldwide. ¶ 12:29 PM 1 comments links to this post
2.21.2006
Was I too hard on Harold? The birthday theory
Watching today the Conversation with Harold Channer and me I felt uncomfortable about how hard I came down on him. I was reacting to an inner sense that his questioning was destructive, distracting, and needlessly doubtful plus having heard from so many people complaining about his interruptions and longwinded rambling. So I did let him know I wasn't happy with his style of interruption. But I think I wont over the top calling him names.
I have had several very long conversations with Harold about his interrupting and last night I had another long conversation with him at his place about his interviewing and conversation skills. When I complained that he resorted to the same pet phrases with each guest, like "blowing in the wind" and "history is a nightmare" and Fukiyama's end of history, I was surprised with his defending it that it was new to each guest. But it is not new to your audience I came back with, only to hear him say that he didn't care what his audience felt about it. That took me aback bigtime! Producers are supposed to care about that, I felt. But Harold felt some justification like artists that don't try to please anyone but themselves, and by just focussing on that they produce great art. Harold also alluded, last night, to his approach to conversation as like the spontaneous improvisation of jamming in jazz. To that I said that improvisation required genuine spontaneity and not rehashing old riffs, old pet phrases, old shtick. After the show Harold telephoned to say he wanted me to email him my birthday trip to study, which I am about to do.
At my request Harold passed the phone eventually to his partner Margie and she told me she felt that I gave him a needed kick in the butt about his interrupting, that just about all his guests do after doing a show with him.
Here is what I am going to send him, but without the diagrams which I can't pick up with a cut and paste, so I will have to urge you to go to
http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html for the complete version
A Theory for the Significance of Birthday by Joseph Friendly
Birthday is too important to leave to the archaic premises of astrology.
Birthday is important because the sun is so important in our environment
and timing and order of experiences are so crucial in human neural development.
It is argued here that birthday provides us a very useful compass to sort human
natures like the Periodic Table sorts the chemical elements with rows and columns,
a solar compass to help us get our bearings in the confusing human universe, the
basis of a new psychology and a new approach to philosophy.
[ Please go to http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html]
The envelope of energy that we receive day by day in the course of a year from the sun varies as a huge sine cycle, one cycle per year, with a range of amplitude, all positive, from about 150 calories per square centimeter per day in December to about 800 or more calories per day in June, the maximum ranging from about 700 to 900 calories depending on latitude.
Individuals of different birthdays, which amount to different phase angles of
the annual solar energy sine wave, will experience systematically different looking 3-month and 12-month environmental profiles with respect to the sun.
Birthday is important not because of what happens on the day of birth, but
because day of birth happens to be a mathematically profound index of systematically
different environmental patterns with respect to the sun when our neural systems are
known to develop their individual forms of organization, integration.
Either the human nervous system has evolved to respond to these
systematically different solar environmental patterns which correspond to a basic
mathematical dimension: phase on the annual solar energy sine envelope, or it has
not! I claim, "Of course it has!" in the tradition of Copernicus urging us to
center upon the sun for understanding what's going on.
Most animals have particular times of year that they are born characteristic
of their species. Their characteristic personalities can be seen as a result, in
large part, of each species experiencing particular environmental patterns as it
develops its neural organization. What makes human nature mysterious are human
females having about 12-13 eggs ripening throughout the span of each year and
conceptions and births occurring throughout each year.
The argument here is to see this as a system evolved to maximize the variety
of ways of organizing human neural systems: A full variety of ways of dealing with
situations and making sense.
What is the likely physiological mechanism for the birthday effect?
According to a review article (1997) in the Journal of Biorhythms by TA Wehr of the
NIH Dept of Clinical Psychobiology,
“The human retinohypothalamic-pineal (RHP) axis
is capable of detecting changes in the length of night
and in producing the melatonin message
which other animals use to trigger seasonal changes. …
It is not yet known whether or how human systems respond
to the seasonal melatonin message.”
As for whether human systems respond, from my observing for 40 years
birthday effects in adults including extensive contact with thousands of customers
in my You Can Help Manhattan moving company ---at some point learning their
birthdays--- talking at length about their own love life and their parents’ marriages
and how they got along with siblings and bosses, friends, etc., along with talking
about their traits and such other things as their politics, tastes, interests,
beliefs, it seems apparent there exist out there patterns of traits in the birthday
spectrum which astrological generalizations about character undertake to allude to.
As for how human systems respond, that is, what mechanism relates melatonin
signaling to character differences, from my observing differences in the adult, what
is apparent is there are systematic differences in neural programming architecture
of the very systems responsible for overall integration and organization.
Also, not only length of night as sensed by the RHP axis, but direct solar
energy levels sensed by the skin and other organs and the indirect effects of
seasonality, in the natural and even social environment, may also be the stimulation
we respond to, to differentially program us in early human development how to deal
with the variety of situational differences in life.
For the differential programming I suggest we look to the brainstem and its
flowering top the Hypothalamus and Thalamus, which have the role of together acting
like a computer’s CPU: Central Processing Unit, processing our neural information
from the body’s senses and organs and from senses in the head among the various
neural organs and back to the body’s muscles, nerves, and various organs.
In other words, what we think of as the workings of the brain is popularly
attributed to the cortex, but the cortex seems to function more like computer memory
than central processor. The surprising point here is that the Thalamus and
Hypothalamus are positioned to optimally present themselves to the sun: the
thalamus with its 2 petals or wing-like structures on either side of the pineal
gland in the path of light through the eye region, and the hypothalamus in closest
proximity to the pineal, right behind it, as if Evolution were providing opportunity
beyond only RHP melatonin signaling for solar energy variation over time to directly
affect neural processing parameters.
Apparently, Nature's plan for the human species was for a methodically
universal variety of neural programming according to birthday: A full variety of
different human natures, different approaches to reality, viewpoints, to evolve in
competition and cooperation with each other.
Birthday turns out to be the long sought key to untying that knot known as
the mystery of Human Nature by revealing that human nature is actually a circular
birthday spectrum of different human natures. The circle is not mere metaphor. The
circular geometry well approximates actual biological forces by corresponding to
phase angle on the annual solar energy sine wave experienced by the individual as
result of birthday.
Each part of the whole circle, each birthday group, should best be studied
individually as a particular form of human nature with its own physiology, its own
forms of neural integration and ways of making sense.
Angular relationships among the various birthday groups on the circle turn
out to provide useful basis for generalization. From the 40 years’ observation I
have concluded people with birthdays 6 months apart generally tend to appreciate
each other and this is the best combination for friendships, partnerships, and
marriage, while people of birthdays 3 months apart tend to contradict and annoy one
another.
Astrology has come to the same conclusion, but introduces additional
variables in terms of celestial events like motions of the planets and moon that
create contradictions among generalizations serving the function of fudge factors to
provide excuses when sun sign generalizations alone happen to fail.
I have concluded birthdays of parents is an important second order variable
for refining birthday generalization.
Compared with other factors science has studied in the human domain, the
huge annual solar energy cycle is in a class all its own, with such a huge
variation, over 400%, that phase on this cycle ---which amounts to birthday--- can
be considered a very strong force in individual development.
Significant birthday differences have been reported occasionally in the
scientific literature. My own survey of about 5000 with a specially designed
questionnaire demonstrated birthday differences in response to such questions as,
Do you like to argue?
Are you a good card player?
Do you have much of a temper?
Are you more idealist than realist?
What has been lacking is a plausible theory consistent with contemporary science
for how birthday might play such a role in human development. There is so much data
in terms of birthday that can be analyzed once the usefulness is contemplated.
Eventually we may learn of the birthdate effect as a whole people, together, by
watching on TV several people of the same birthday, their similarities and
differences pointed out by expert questioning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Frequently asked questions:
1. What about other latitudes, like the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: For what surprisingly little land actually there is in the Southern Hemisphere’s Temperate Zone it would be necessary to make a 6 month shift in birthday generalizations to match solar environments and birthday characteristics observable in the Northern Temperate Zone.
This provides a valuable opportunity to test the theory here proposed, whether there is observable this 6 month shift of birthday traits. For Equatorial and Arctic latitudes there would be predicted different human characteristics.
2. Isn’t time of conception important?
Answer: We are dealing with a system of human differentiation that has evolved with both birthtime and time of conception playing a role. I have no data by way of observations to suggest what effect an early or late birth makes compared with a normal gestation period. The isolation in modern hospitals from the natural environment, particularly that pre-maturely born neonates experience for a month or more seems unfortunate and cries for correction.
3. How does this fit in with biorhythms?
Answer: I have definitely observed individuals experience a time of problematic relation to their environment such as vulnerability to illness and accident, a general tiredness, even a tendency to conflict with associates, in the period 2 weeks before the birthday and 2 weeks before the point 6 months from the birthday, which is most extreme on the first day of these 2-week periods.
This contrasts with how biorhythms are figured, neglecting entrainment of birthday with current year which is argued here, and simply counting 23, 28, and 32 day periods all the way back to time of birth.
Joseph Friendly
joefriendly@earthlink.net ¶ 12:03 PM 2 comments links to this post
I have had several very long conversations with Harold about his interrupting and last night I had another long conversation with him at his place about his interviewing and conversation skills. When I complained that he resorted to the same pet phrases with each guest, like "blowing in the wind" and "history is a nightmare" and Fukiyama's end of history, I was surprised with his defending it that it was new to each guest. But it is not new to your audience I came back with, only to hear him say that he didn't care what his audience felt about it. That took me aback bigtime! Producers are supposed to care about that, I felt. But Harold felt some justification like artists that don't try to please anyone but themselves, and by just focussing on that they produce great art. Harold also alluded, last night, to his approach to conversation as like the spontaneous improvisation of jamming in jazz. To that I said that improvisation required genuine spontaneity and not rehashing old riffs, old pet phrases, old shtick. After the show Harold telephoned to say he wanted me to email him my birthday trip to study, which I am about to do.
At my request Harold passed the phone eventually to his partner Margie and she told me she felt that I gave him a needed kick in the butt about his interrupting, that just about all his guests do after doing a show with him.
Here is what I am going to send him, but without the diagrams which I can't pick up with a cut and paste, so I will have to urge you to go to
http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html for the complete version
A Theory for the Significance of Birthday by Joseph Friendly
Birthday is too important to leave to the archaic premises of astrology.
Birthday is important because the sun is so important in our environment
and timing and order of experiences are so crucial in human neural development.
It is argued here that birthday provides us a very useful compass to sort human
natures like the Periodic Table sorts the chemical elements with rows and columns,
a solar compass to help us get our bearings in the confusing human universe, the
basis of a new psychology and a new approach to philosophy.
[ Please go to http://friendly.home.pipeline.com/birthday.html]
The envelope of energy that we receive day by day in the course of a year from the sun varies as a huge sine cycle, one cycle per year, with a range of amplitude, all positive, from about 150 calories per square centimeter per day in December to about 800 or more calories per day in June, the maximum ranging from about 700 to 900 calories depending on latitude.
Individuals of different birthdays, which amount to different phase angles of
the annual solar energy sine wave, will experience systematically different looking 3-month and 12-month environmental profiles with respect to the sun.
Birthday is important not because of what happens on the day of birth, but
because day of birth happens to be a mathematically profound index of systematically
different environmental patterns with respect to the sun when our neural systems are
known to develop their individual forms of organization, integration.
Either the human nervous system has evolved to respond to these
systematically different solar environmental patterns which correspond to a basic
mathematical dimension: phase on the annual solar energy sine envelope, or it has
not! I claim, "Of course it has!" in the tradition of Copernicus urging us to
center upon the sun for understanding what's going on.
Most animals have particular times of year that they are born characteristic
of their species. Their characteristic personalities can be seen as a result, in
large part, of each species experiencing particular environmental patterns as it
develops its neural organization. What makes human nature mysterious are human
females having about 12-13 eggs ripening throughout the span of each year and
conceptions and births occurring throughout each year.
The argument here is to see this as a system evolved to maximize the variety
of ways of organizing human neural systems: A full variety of ways of dealing with
situations and making sense.
What is the likely physiological mechanism for the birthday effect?
According to a review article (1997) in the Journal of Biorhythms by TA Wehr of the
NIH Dept of Clinical Psychobiology,
“The human retinohypothalamic-pineal (RHP) axis
is capable of detecting changes in the length of night
and in producing the melatonin message
which other animals use to trigger seasonal changes. …
It is not yet known whether or how human systems respond
to the seasonal melatonin message.”
As for whether human systems respond, from my observing for 40 years
birthday effects in adults including extensive contact with thousands of customers
in my You Can Help Manhattan moving company ---at some point learning their
birthdays--- talking at length about their own love life and their parents’ marriages
and how they got along with siblings and bosses, friends, etc., along with talking
about their traits and such other things as their politics, tastes, interests,
beliefs, it seems apparent there exist out there patterns of traits in the birthday
spectrum which astrological generalizations about character undertake to allude to.
As for how human systems respond, that is, what mechanism relates melatonin
signaling to character differences, from my observing differences in the adult, what
is apparent is there are systematic differences in neural programming architecture
of the very systems responsible for overall integration and organization.
Also, not only length of night as sensed by the RHP axis, but direct solar
energy levels sensed by the skin and other organs and the indirect effects of
seasonality, in the natural and even social environment, may also be the stimulation
we respond to, to differentially program us in early human development how to deal
with the variety of situational differences in life.
For the differential programming I suggest we look to the brainstem and its
flowering top the Hypothalamus and Thalamus, which have the role of together acting
like a computer’s CPU: Central Processing Unit, processing our neural information
from the body’s senses and organs and from senses in the head among the various
neural organs and back to the body’s muscles, nerves, and various organs.
In other words, what we think of as the workings of the brain is popularly
attributed to the cortex, but the cortex seems to function more like computer memory
than central processor. The surprising point here is that the Thalamus and
Hypothalamus are positioned to optimally present themselves to the sun: the
thalamus with its 2 petals or wing-like structures on either side of the pineal
gland in the path of light through the eye region, and the hypothalamus in closest
proximity to the pineal, right behind it, as if Evolution were providing opportunity
beyond only RHP melatonin signaling for solar energy variation over time to directly
affect neural processing parameters.
Apparently, Nature's plan for the human species was for a methodically
universal variety of neural programming according to birthday: A full variety of
different human natures, different approaches to reality, viewpoints, to evolve in
competition and cooperation with each other.
Birthday turns out to be the long sought key to untying that knot known as
the mystery of Human Nature by revealing that human nature is actually a circular
birthday spectrum of different human natures. The circle is not mere metaphor. The
circular geometry well approximates actual biological forces by corresponding to
phase angle on the annual solar energy sine wave experienced by the individual as
result of birthday.
Each part of the whole circle, each birthday group, should best be studied
individually as a particular form of human nature with its own physiology, its own
forms of neural integration and ways of making sense.
Angular relationships among the various birthday groups on the circle turn
out to provide useful basis for generalization. From the 40 years’ observation I
have concluded people with birthdays 6 months apart generally tend to appreciate
each other and this is the best combination for friendships, partnerships, and
marriage, while people of birthdays 3 months apart tend to contradict and annoy one
another.
Astrology has come to the same conclusion, but introduces additional
variables in terms of celestial events like motions of the planets and moon that
create contradictions among generalizations serving the function of fudge factors to
provide excuses when sun sign generalizations alone happen to fail.
I have concluded birthdays of parents is an important second order variable
for refining birthday generalization.
Compared with other factors science has studied in the human domain, the
huge annual solar energy cycle is in a class all its own, with such a huge
variation, over 400%, that phase on this cycle ---which amounts to birthday--- can
be considered a very strong force in individual development.
Significant birthday differences have been reported occasionally in the
scientific literature. My own survey of about 5000 with a specially designed
questionnaire demonstrated birthday differences in response to such questions as,
Do you like to argue?
Are you a good card player?
Do you have much of a temper?
Are you more idealist than realist?
What has been lacking is a plausible theory consistent with contemporary science
for how birthday might play such a role in human development. There is so much data
in terms of birthday that can be analyzed once the usefulness is contemplated.
Eventually we may learn of the birthdate effect as a whole people, together, by
watching on TV several people of the same birthday, their similarities and
differences pointed out by expert questioning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Frequently asked questions:
1. What about other latitudes, like the Southern Hemisphere?
Answer: For what surprisingly little land actually there is in the Southern Hemisphere’s Temperate Zone it would be necessary to make a 6 month shift in birthday generalizations to match solar environments and birthday characteristics observable in the Northern Temperate Zone.
This provides a valuable opportunity to test the theory here proposed, whether there is observable this 6 month shift of birthday traits. For Equatorial and Arctic latitudes there would be predicted different human characteristics.
2. Isn’t time of conception important?
Answer: We are dealing with a system of human differentiation that has evolved with both birthtime and time of conception playing a role. I have no data by way of observations to suggest what effect an early or late birth makes compared with a normal gestation period. The isolation in modern hospitals from the natural environment, particularly that pre-maturely born neonates experience for a month or more seems unfortunate and cries for correction.
3. How does this fit in with biorhythms?
Answer: I have definitely observed individuals experience a time of problematic relation to their environment such as vulnerability to illness and accident, a general tiredness, even a tendency to conflict with associates, in the period 2 weeks before the birthday and 2 weeks before the point 6 months from the birthday, which is most extreme on the first day of these 2-week periods.
This contrasts with how biorhythms are figured, neglecting entrainment of birthday with current year which is argued here, and simply counting 23, 28, and 32 day periods all the way back to time of birth.
Joseph Friendly
joefriendly@earthlink.net ¶ 12:03 PM 2 comments links to this post
2.11.2006
Truth For A Change with Joe Friendly
Party time Sunday at 106th Street Park?
I didn't mention a time when I put at the end of Friday's program, Feb 10, an invitation for a Sunday party February 12 for viewers of Truth For A Change at the park on Broadway and 106th Street and now several inches of snow are predicted! I'll be there from noon to 4, more or less, to meet anyone who takes me up on the offer.
Any comments on Friday's show with Sharin? A friendly revolution?
Give me a call at 212 864 2828 and we'll see what else we can come up with to meet and talk. ¶ 11:20 AM 0 comments links to this post
I didn't mention a time when I put at the end of Friday's program, Feb 10, an invitation for a Sunday party February 12 for viewers of Truth For A Change at the park on Broadway and 106th Street and now several inches of snow are predicted! I'll be there from noon to 4, more or less, to meet anyone who takes me up on the offer.
Any comments on Friday's show with Sharin? A friendly revolution?
Give me a call at 212 864 2828 and we'll see what else we can come up with to meet and talk. ¶ 11:20 AM 0 comments links to this post
1.29.2006
Singer's name for Palestine Needs Her Freedom: Lucie Murphy
In the post about filling in the last 13 minutes with a song, I didn't have the singer's name. She did such a wonderful job I wanted her to get full credit.
Lucie Murphy
"Palestine Needs Her Freedom!",
You can download her song as sung at the Palestine Demonstration of March 2002 in Washington at the link noted, sinkers.org.
RealAudio, 03min 25sec
.wav file, 4.3MB ¶ 2:09 PM 0 comments links to this post
Lucie Murphy
"Palestine Needs Her Freedom!",
You can download her song as sung at the Palestine Demonstration of March 2002 in Washington at the link noted, sinkers.org.
RealAudio, 03min 25sec
.wav file, 4.3MB ¶ 2:09 PM 0 comments links to this post
How did viewers like Thursday Jan 26 informal arguing about Palestine?
I thought I broke new ground with the Thursday Jan 26 program, devoting about 45 minutes to what seemed like just a couple people arguing about the Palestinians' right of return to land seized by Israel. I was so impressed with the Palestinian student of International Affairs, Rhanda (spelling?), her committment to dialogue and reasoning that I felt it deserved an airing. With the 13 minutes remaining I was able to find in my archives a lovely song about Palestine needing our love in which the singer gets the church audience to sing along, and then a report from some Jewish people returning from a visit with Palestinians testifying to how well they were treated, even after their Jewishness was pointed up.
I am curious how the program went over with viewers, but the program the next day, with Belafonte, Ratner, and Ritter, was the major salvo against the Bush administration outrage in Iraq that I feel was really worth getting excited about. ¶ 10:40 AM 1 comments links to this post
I am curious how the program went over with viewers, but the program the next day, with Belafonte, Ratner, and Ritter, was the major salvo against the Bush administration outrage in Iraq that I feel was really worth getting excited about. ¶ 10:40 AM 1 comments links to this post
1.22.2006
Bush Crimes Against Humanity
I had the honor of capturing on video the entire weekend event entitled, the Final Session of the 2005-2006 International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Adminstration of the United States, January 20-22. (I also captured the entire first session in October 2005, sharing what I shot with DemocracyNow! and airing highlights on Truth For A Change, mainly Denis Halliday, Ann Wright, Ray McGovern, and Camilo Mejia. There is planned for February 2, 2006 a presentation of the Commission verdict in Washington.
On Friday, January 27, 2006 I presented on Truth For A Change virtually in their entirety the talks by Harry Belafonte and Michael Ratner and the testimony of Scott Ritter examined by Ray McGovern, with some Larry Everest and Clark Kissinger appearing briefly. I felt it was such a strong combination that it should be distributed as widely as possible. I have contacted BushCommission.org urging their helping with distribution, and will be giving them a DVD Monday for them to begin with at least putting it up on their site for download and sale.
Monday's TFAC will have Chris Fox and Daphne Wysham on Bush's irresponsible response to the Global Warming crisis. Tuesday will be Dahr Jamail on the destructiveness of US occupation of Iraq and Jeremy Scahill on targeting journalists there. Wednesday will be Tom Goldtooth testimony on polution of tribal lands and Alan Berkman testimony on Bush policy making AIDS treatment unaffordable around the world. Thursday will be testimony by former general Janice Karpinsky and Padilla's lawyer Donna Newman. Resuming the week after that will be for Monday, Barbara Olshansky on torture.
Here is the program of the event: FRIDAY EVENING, January 20, 5:30 - 9 pm, Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue
5:30 - 6:15 pm
Introduction
C. Clark Kissinger, Not in Our Name
Harry Belefonte provided an overview of the evil empire
Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights
Introduction of the Judges:
Adjoa Aiyetoro, Professor of Law, University of Arkansas
Dennis Brutus, former prisoner, Robbens Island, South Africa, poet, Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Abdeen Jabara, former President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY
Ann Wright, former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel
6:15-6:45 Alan Berkman on AIDS and Global Health (He had to give his presentation on Friday rather than as part of the Saturday program that took up this issue because of personal committments.)
6:45 - 9 pm
Wars of Aggression
Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector. Ritter's testimony taken by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern - on Bush WMD claims
Lindsey German, Convenor, UK Stop the War Coalition
Dahr Jamail, independent journalist, reported on Fallujah massacre
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, reported on targetting of journalists
David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org - on the Downing Street memo
Larry Everest, author, "Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda"
Video footage documenting commission of war crimes during occupation
SATURDAY, January 21, 10:30 am - 6 pm, Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue
10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Destruction of the Global Environment
Ted Glick, Climate Crisis Coalition
Also Chris Fox, Chairman, Department of Environmental Science & Technology, Community College of Baltimore County -spoke on world scientific community's concensus on global warming.
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, on degradation of tribal environments
Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies, Sustainable Energy & Economy Network
Josh Tulkin, environmental scientist - on relationship between Katrina and global warming
1:30 Award to Craig Murray for his courage by Ray McGovern
1:40 - 5:30 pm
Torture, Rendition, Illegal Detention, and Murder
Barbara Olshansky, Center for Constitutional Rights, lawyer for Guantanamo prisoners - on the background of detention
Eric Lerner, New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee
Donna Newman, attorney for Jose Padilla
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander Abu Ghraib prison - on Bush Administration responsibility for the torture, examined by Marjorie Cohn, President-elect of National Lawyers Guild
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - on use of torture
SUNDAY, January 22, 1 - 5 pm, Columbia University Law School, 116th & Amsterdam Avenue
1:15 pm
Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights
William Smith, Vice President for Public Policy, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
Prof. Ida Susser, of Columbia University, School of Public Health, on the impact on women of Bush administration's policies
Dr. Thomas Fasy, Associate Professor of Pathology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
[more witnesses TBA]
3:15 pm
Katrina
Chokwe Lumumba, lawyer and human rights activist
Carl Dix, National Spokesperson, Revolutionary Communist Party
D. McBride, who was left to drown in a New Orleans prisoner when Katrina struck
Expert (TBA) on the state of levies in New Orleans
Expert (TBA) on "redevelopment" of New Orleans ¶ 8:48 AM 0 comments links to this post
On Friday, January 27, 2006 I presented on Truth For A Change virtually in their entirety the talks by Harry Belafonte and Michael Ratner and the testimony of Scott Ritter examined by Ray McGovern, with some Larry Everest and Clark Kissinger appearing briefly. I felt it was such a strong combination that it should be distributed as widely as possible. I have contacted BushCommission.org urging their helping with distribution, and will be giving them a DVD Monday for them to begin with at least putting it up on their site for download and sale.
Monday's TFAC will have Chris Fox and Daphne Wysham on Bush's irresponsible response to the Global Warming crisis. Tuesday will be Dahr Jamail on the destructiveness of US occupation of Iraq and Jeremy Scahill on targeting journalists there. Wednesday will be Tom Goldtooth testimony on polution of tribal lands and Alan Berkman testimony on Bush policy making AIDS treatment unaffordable around the world. Thursday will be testimony by former general Janice Karpinsky and Padilla's lawyer Donna Newman. Resuming the week after that will be for Monday, Barbara Olshansky on torture.
Here is the program of the event: FRIDAY EVENING, January 20, 5:30 - 9 pm, Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue
5:30 - 6:15 pm
Introduction
C. Clark Kissinger, Not in Our Name
Harry Belefonte provided an overview of the evil empire
Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights
Introduction of the Judges:
Adjoa Aiyetoro, Professor of Law, University of Arkansas
Dennis Brutus, former prisoner, Robbens Island, South Africa, poet, Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Abdeen Jabara, former President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Ajamu Sankofa, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-NY
Ann Wright, former US diplomat and retired US Army Reserve Colonel
6:15-6:45 Alan Berkman on AIDS and Global Health (He had to give his presentation on Friday rather than as part of the Saturday program that took up this issue because of personal committments.)
6:45 - 9 pm
Wars of Aggression
Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector. Ritter's testimony taken by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern - on Bush WMD claims
Lindsey German, Convenor, UK Stop the War Coalition
Dahr Jamail, independent journalist, reported on Fallujah massacre
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, reported on targetting of journalists
David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org - on the Downing Street memo
Larry Everest, author, "Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda"
Video footage documenting commission of war crimes during occupation
SATURDAY, January 21, 10:30 am - 6 pm, Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue
10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Destruction of the Global Environment
Ted Glick, Climate Crisis Coalition
Also Chris Fox, Chairman, Department of Environmental Science & Technology, Community College of Baltimore County -spoke on world scientific community's concensus on global warming.
Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental Network, on degradation of tribal environments
Daphne Wysham, Institute for Policy Studies, Sustainable Energy & Economy Network
Josh Tulkin, environmental scientist - on relationship between Katrina and global warming
1:30 Award to Craig Murray for his courage by Ray McGovern
1:40 - 5:30 pm
Torture, Rendition, Illegal Detention, and Murder
Barbara Olshansky, Center for Constitutional Rights, lawyer for Guantanamo prisoners - on the background of detention
Eric Lerner, New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee
Donna Newman, attorney for Jose Padilla
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander Abu Ghraib prison - on Bush Administration responsibility for the torture, examined by Marjorie Cohn, President-elect of National Lawyers Guild
Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan - on use of torture
SUNDAY, January 22, 1 - 5 pm, Columbia University Law School, 116th & Amsterdam Avenue
1:15 pm
Attacks on Global Public Health and Reproductive Rights
William Smith, Vice President for Public Policy, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States
Prof. Ida Susser, of Columbia University, School of Public Health, on the impact on women of Bush administration's policies
Dr. Thomas Fasy, Associate Professor of Pathology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
[more witnesses TBA]
3:15 pm
Katrina
Chokwe Lumumba, lawyer and human rights activist
Carl Dix, National Spokesperson, Revolutionary Communist Party
D. McBride, who was left to drown in a New Orleans prisoner when Katrina struck
Expert (TBA) on the state of levies in New Orleans
Expert (TBA) on "redevelopment" of New Orleans ¶ 8:48 AM 0 comments links to this post
11.16.2005
On the line: the internet's future
More than 40 world leaders, including Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, are set to attend, and the ownership of the World Wide Web itself is at stake. What the delegates won't discuss is the creeping spectre of censorship.
What began as a military research project at the Pentagon has exploded into the most powerful network in the world and an entity upon which the global economy increasingly relies. Its future character is now in question. . .
follow the link for the full article.
11.09.2005
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Help Save Public Access TV!
Your Community Cable Channels (Public, Educational, Governmental) are
under threat by pending legislation in the House and Senate. Take Action!
Go to Link to send e-mails -- URGENT!!!
¶ 7:03 PM 0 comments links to this post
Help Save Public Access TV!
Your Community Cable Channels (Public, Educational, Governmental) are
under threat by pending legislation in the House and Senate. Take Action!
Go to Link to send e-mails -- URGENT!!!
¶ 7:03 PM 0 comments links to this post
11.07.2005
Fallujah. La strage nascosta [Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre] will be shown on RAI News November 8th at 07:35 (via HOT BIRDTM statellite, Sky Channel 506 and RAI-3), and rebroadcast by HOT BIRDTM satellite and Sky Channel 506 at 17:00 [5 pm] and over the next two days.
¶ 11:36 PM 0 comments
links to this post
The Concealed Massacre
Il fosforo bianco in azione
RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow November 8th on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident. ¶ 11:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
Il fosforo bianco in azione
RAI News 24's investigative story, Fallujah, The Concealed Massacre, will be broadcast tomorrow November 8th on RAI-3 and will contain not only eye-witness accounts by US military personnel but those from Fallujah residents. A rain of fire descended on the city. People who were exposed to those multicolored substance began to burn. We found people with bizarre wounds-their bodies burned but their clothes intact, relates Mohamad Tareq al-Deraji, a biologist and Fallujah resident. ¶ 11:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
Dahr Jamail
What really happened in Fallujah and Ramadi?
During the November, 2004 siege of Fallujah, 60% of the city was completely destroyed. Most of the rest of it had moderate to severe damage done as well. Iraqi NGO's and medical workers in and around Fallujah estimate over 4000 dead, mostly civilians. To this day, over 50,000 residents of Fallujah remain displaced.
The US military used cluster bombs, depleted uranium munitions, and white phosphorous (a new form of napalm) during the siege, and appear to have used forms of chemical weapons as well.
I have described Fallujah as a modern day Guernica, and prefer to call it a massacre rather than a siege. Fallujah is the model of Bush Administration foreign policy. There has been next to no reconstruction completed inside the city, as was promised by occupation authorities.
What really happened in Fallujah and Ramadi?
Frankenstein in the room.
Cheney's career has been one power grab after another, of which Iraq is his magnum opus. And he has bred a culture of revenge, which led to the treason of Rove and Libby in the outing of Plame to the media. But now, people are starting to realize that they have a Frankenstein in the room.
¶ 11:01 PM 6 comments links to this post
¶ 11:01 PM 6 comments links to this post
Deconstructing Cheney
Boston.com
The Boston Globe
JAMES CARROLL
Deconstructing Cheney
By James Carroll | November 7, 2005
THE INDICTMENT of the vice president's chief of staff for perjury and obstruction of justice is an occasion to consider just how damaging the long public career of Richard Cheney has been to the United States. He began as a political scientist devoted to caring for the elbow of Donald Rumsfeld. As a congressman, Rumsfeld had reliably voted against programs to help the nation's poor, so (as I recalled in reading James Mann's ''Rise of the Vulcans") it was with more than usual cynicism that Richard Nixon appointed him head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the antipoverty agency. Rumsfeld named Cheney as his deputy, and the two set out to gut the program-- the beginning of the Republican rollback of the Great Society, what we saw in New Orleans this fall.
When Rumsfeld became Gerald Ford's White House chief of staff, he again tapped Cheney as his deputy. Now they set out to destroy detente, the fragile new relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dismissing detente as moral relativism, Cheney so believed in Cold War bipolarity that when it began to melt in the late 1980s, he tried to refreeze it. As George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was key to America's refusal to accommodate the hopeful new spirit of the age. Violence was in retreat, with peace breaking out across the globe, from the Philippines to South Africa, Ireland, the Middle East, and Central America. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Cheney forged America's response -- which was, little over a month later, to wage an illegal war against Panama.
As Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the nonviolent dismantling of the Soviet Union, Cheney warned Bush not to trust it. When the justification for the huge military machine over which Cheney presided disappeared, he leapt on the next casus belli -- Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Hussein, a former ally, was now Hitler.
Against Cheney's own uniformed advisers (notably including Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell), he forged Washington's choice of violence over diplomacy. The first Gulf War, remembered by Americans as justified, was in fact an unnecessary affirmation of military might as the ground of international order, just as an historic alternative was opening up. US responses in that period, mainly shaped by Cheney, stand in stark contrast to Gorbachev's, who, refusing to call on military might even to save the Soviet Union, was ordering his soldiers back to their barracks. The unsentimental Cheney, eschewing human rights rhetoric, was explicit in defining America's Gulf War interest as all about oil. (The oil industry having made Cheney rich.) Cheney's initiatives, more than any other's, defined the insult to the Arab world that spawned Al Qaeda.
With all of this as prelude, it seems as tragic as it was inevitable that Cheney was behind the wheel again when the next fork in the road appeared before the nation. When the World Trade Center towers were hit in New York, it was Cheney who told a shaken President Bush to flee. The true nature of their relationship (Cheney, not Bush, having shaped the national security team; Cheney, not Bush, having appointed himself as vice president) showed itself for a moment.
The 9/11 Commission found that, from the White House situation room, Cheney warned the president that a ''specific threat" had targeted Air Force One, prompting Bush to spend the day hiding in the bunker at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. There was no specific threat. In Bush's absence, Cheney, implying an authorizing telephone call from the president, took command of the nation's response to the crisis. There was no authorizing telephone call. The 9/11 Commission declined to make an issue of Cheney's usurpation of powers, but the record shows it.
At world-shaping moments across a generation, Cheney reacted with an instinctive, This is war! He helped turn the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He helped keep the Cold War going longer than it had to, and when it ended (because of initiatives taken by the other side), Cheney refused to believe it. To keep the US war machine up and running, he found a new justification just in time. With Gulf War I, Cheney ignited Osama bin Laden's burning purpose. Responding to 9/11, Cheney fulfilled bin Laden's purpose by joining him in the war-of-civilizations. Iraq, therefore (including the prewar deceit for which Scooter Libby takes the fall), is simply the last link in the chain of disaster which is the public career of Richard Cheney.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company ¶ 10:58 PM 0 comments links to this post
The Boston Globe
JAMES CARROLL
Deconstructing Cheney
By James Carroll | November 7, 2005
THE INDICTMENT of the vice president's chief of staff for perjury and obstruction of justice is an occasion to consider just how damaging the long public career of Richard Cheney has been to the United States. He began as a political scientist devoted to caring for the elbow of Donald Rumsfeld. As a congressman, Rumsfeld had reliably voted against programs to help the nation's poor, so (as I recalled in reading James Mann's ''Rise of the Vulcans") it was with more than usual cynicism that Richard Nixon appointed him head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the antipoverty agency. Rumsfeld named Cheney as his deputy, and the two set out to gut the program-- the beginning of the Republican rollback of the Great Society, what we saw in New Orleans this fall.
When Rumsfeld became Gerald Ford's White House chief of staff, he again tapped Cheney as his deputy. Now they set out to destroy detente, the fragile new relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dismissing detente as moral relativism, Cheney so believed in Cold War bipolarity that when it began to melt in the late 1980s, he tried to refreeze it. As George H.W. Bush's secretary of defense, Cheney was key to America's refusal to accommodate the hopeful new spirit of the age. Violence was in retreat, with peace breaking out across the globe, from the Philippines to South Africa, Ireland, the Middle East, and Central America. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Cheney forged America's response -- which was, little over a month later, to wage an illegal war against Panama.
As Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the nonviolent dismantling of the Soviet Union, Cheney warned Bush not to trust it. When the justification for the huge military machine over which Cheney presided disappeared, he leapt on the next casus belli -- Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. Hussein, a former ally, was now Hitler.
Against Cheney's own uniformed advisers (notably including Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell), he forged Washington's choice of violence over diplomacy. The first Gulf War, remembered by Americans as justified, was in fact an unnecessary affirmation of military might as the ground of international order, just as an historic alternative was opening up. US responses in that period, mainly shaped by Cheney, stand in stark contrast to Gorbachev's, who, refusing to call on military might even to save the Soviet Union, was ordering his soldiers back to their barracks. The unsentimental Cheney, eschewing human rights rhetoric, was explicit in defining America's Gulf War interest as all about oil. (The oil industry having made Cheney rich.) Cheney's initiatives, more than any other's, defined the insult to the Arab world that spawned Al Qaeda.
With all of this as prelude, it seems as tragic as it was inevitable that Cheney was behind the wheel again when the next fork in the road appeared before the nation. When the World Trade Center towers were hit in New York, it was Cheney who told a shaken President Bush to flee. The true nature of their relationship (Cheney, not Bush, having shaped the national security team; Cheney, not Bush, having appointed himself as vice president) showed itself for a moment.
The 9/11 Commission found that, from the White House situation room, Cheney warned the president that a ''specific threat" had targeted Air Force One, prompting Bush to spend the day hiding in the bunker at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska. There was no specific threat. In Bush's absence, Cheney, implying an authorizing telephone call from the president, took command of the nation's response to the crisis. There was no authorizing telephone call. The 9/11 Commission declined to make an issue of Cheney's usurpation of powers, but the record shows it.
At world-shaping moments across a generation, Cheney reacted with an instinctive, This is war! He helped turn the War on Poverty into a war on the poor. He helped keep the Cold War going longer than it had to, and when it ended (because of initiatives taken by the other side), Cheney refused to believe it. To keep the US war machine up and running, he found a new justification just in time. With Gulf War I, Cheney ignited Osama bin Laden's burning purpose. Responding to 9/11, Cheney fulfilled bin Laden's purpose by joining him in the war-of-civilizations. Iraq, therefore (including the prewar deceit for which Scooter Libby takes the fall), is simply the last link in the chain of disaster which is the public career of Richard Cheney.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company ¶ 10:58 PM 0 comments links to this post
11.06.2005
Bush Is the Most Hated Man in the History of the World?
South American Protests: Bush Is the Most Hated Man in the History of the World?
a Planetary Pariah of Bibilical Proportions
By Rob Kall
An earlier version of this article was published in May, 2004. The violent protests in South America inspired a re-write and reprinting.
There may be a collection of fifty or sixty million blue collar NASCAR dads, fascist Christians, neo-nazis, racists, greedy pig rich people who unpatriotically refuse to pay their fair share in taxes, and the corporate traitors to humanity and the planet... even to life itself, who prefer to support money over the environment, biodiversity and a world that supports humans. These toxic takers are the vast minority of the world-- the supporters of Bush. But the rest of the USA and certainly, the rest of the planet, outside of the corporatists and fascists in other nations, consider George Bush, his verminous minions and cretinous, despicable supporters to be pariahs.
The dictionary defines a pariah as an untouchable. To me, an untouchable by caste is a person who is unjustly treated as a person to be totally avoided and to be accorded contempt. The untouchables in India are born into their caste and it is not their fault.
George Bush has grown into untouchable Pariah-hood. He has taken on the mantle of a religious fraud, the rapist of a nation, the despoiler of nations, the waster of billions, nay hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and assets, the killer of tens of thousands. The destroyer of thousands of homes.
It is very likely, much because the population of the planet has grown so much since the 1940s, when there were just over 2 billion people on the planet, to now, when there are over 6.3 billion, that George Bush is the most hated, most reviled man in the history of the planet-- more hated than Hitler.
His fellow Christianists (if we call Muslims who are fundamentalist and unable to function cooperatively in the world, treating other faiths with disrespect Islamists, then let's call Christians who can't respect other faiths Christianists,) craving early death through the end-times when the anti-christ arrives, ushering in the return of the messiah, believe he is moving them towards their life-rejecting path. But it is just as arguable, perhaps even likely, if one chooses to dance with the "rapture" story, that the ultimate evil anti-christ would masquerade as the great leader who would take the faithful to their dreamed upon heavenly glory. The ultimate antichrist would seem to be the good guy.
So.... right now, about 40 or 50 million Americans think Bush is the good guy. Maybe another 100 million Brits, Germans, Italians, Poles, Australians, Italians, Kurds, Iranians, Saudi princes and Japanese, hey, maybe even 500 million more have enough financial or political interests to also support Bush. I don't think most of those 500 million see him as a good guy. They see him as a venal scoundrel who will sell out his country in ways that support their interests.
That leaves about 5.8 billion people on this planet. The world Muslim population is close to 1.5 billion. Assume 97% of them hate Bush. The sane citizens of the rest of the planet have to see Bush and his supporters as venal, dangerous predators and leeches, fanatic religious zealot fools or duped fools.
Even NY Times centrist pundit Thomas Friedman says, "I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. It's no wonder that so many Americans are obsessed with the finale of the sitcom "Friends" right now. They're the only friends we have, and even they're leaving."
It is tragic that such a small majority of active American voters have been able to create such a vile, reprehensible untouchable who most certainly is the most hated, most loathed man in the history of the world.
I wonder how Hitler's supporters felt when he was the most hated man. Did they realize they were supporting a monster? Were they proud to be contributing to his power? What about after Hitler fell, or Mussolini, or Idi Amin? Did their supporters realize what they'd helped to create? Did they stay loyal to their monsters? Did they see the light and experience regret? George is not the first ugly, planetary monster to be created. We should learn from his predecessors. Like dinosaur researchers, paleontologists, who study dinosaur shit, we should be studying the destroyed industries, the fraudulently justified actions and causes, the ecological disasters and the lies built upon lies and more lies that enabled Bush and his malignant predecessors to attain power. That way, at least we can begin to understand what enables a tiny fraction of the people on this planet to insanely ejaculate such loathsome creatures into such positions of destructive power upon our planet.
Like the puss in a pimple or infected wound, Bush is fulminating and the putrescent flesh surrounding this noxious crud-- Bush's Republican cronies-- is beginning to reject the toxic "substance." If a putrid infection is not treated soon enough, it may become gangrenous, killing the tissue around it. Bush is a disease that is highly toxic.
We see riots in France. Violent demonstrations following the path of Bush. The criminals, liars and thugs who represent the Bush administration and its supporters in congress should be facing serious protests. The right wing hate talk radio commentators should be jailed for echoing the right wing fascist government's lies. The protesters in Argentina have made clear, they don't hate Americans. They hate Bush and the Administration.
They hate the right wing Republican Theofascist, corporatist, Christianist extremists. Most of the world does. It's ironic that we can get help from the rest of the world to help take back America. ¶ 12:00 AM 0 comments links to this post
a Planetary Pariah of Bibilical Proportions
By Rob Kall
An earlier version of this article was published in May, 2004. The violent protests in South America inspired a re-write and reprinting.
There may be a collection of fifty or sixty million blue collar NASCAR dads, fascist Christians, neo-nazis, racists, greedy pig rich people who unpatriotically refuse to pay their fair share in taxes, and the corporate traitors to humanity and the planet... even to life itself, who prefer to support money over the environment, biodiversity and a world that supports humans. These toxic takers are the vast minority of the world-- the supporters of Bush. But the rest of the USA and certainly, the rest of the planet, outside of the corporatists and fascists in other nations, consider George Bush, his verminous minions and cretinous, despicable supporters to be pariahs.
The dictionary defines a pariah as an untouchable. To me, an untouchable by caste is a person who is unjustly treated as a person to be totally avoided and to be accorded contempt. The untouchables in India are born into their caste and it is not their fault.
George Bush has grown into untouchable Pariah-hood. He has taken on the mantle of a religious fraud, the rapist of a nation, the despoiler of nations, the waster of billions, nay hundreds of billions of dollars of resources and assets, the killer of tens of thousands. The destroyer of thousands of homes.
It is very likely, much because the population of the planet has grown so much since the 1940s, when there were just over 2 billion people on the planet, to now, when there are over 6.3 billion, that George Bush is the most hated, most reviled man in the history of the planet-- more hated than Hitler.
His fellow Christianists (if we call Muslims who are fundamentalist and unable to function cooperatively in the world, treating other faiths with disrespect Islamists, then let's call Christians who can't respect other faiths Christianists,) craving early death through the end-times when the anti-christ arrives, ushering in the return of the messiah, believe he is moving them towards their life-rejecting path. But it is just as arguable, perhaps even likely, if one chooses to dance with the "rapture" story, that the ultimate evil anti-christ would masquerade as the great leader who would take the faithful to their dreamed upon heavenly glory. The ultimate antichrist would seem to be the good guy.
So.... right now, about 40 or 50 million Americans think Bush is the good guy. Maybe another 100 million Brits, Germans, Italians, Poles, Australians, Italians, Kurds, Iranians, Saudi princes and Japanese, hey, maybe even 500 million more have enough financial or political interests to also support Bush. I don't think most of those 500 million see him as a good guy. They see him as a venal scoundrel who will sell out his country in ways that support their interests.
That leaves about 5.8 billion people on this planet. The world Muslim population is close to 1.5 billion. Assume 97% of them hate Bush. The sane citizens of the rest of the planet have to see Bush and his supporters as venal, dangerous predators and leeches, fanatic religious zealot fools or duped fools.
Even NY Times centrist pundit Thomas Friedman says, "I have never known a time in my life when America and its president were more hated around the world than today. I was just in Japan, and even young Japanese dislike us. It's no wonder that so many Americans are obsessed with the finale of the sitcom "Friends" right now. They're the only friends we have, and even they're leaving."
It is tragic that such a small majority of active American voters have been able to create such a vile, reprehensible untouchable who most certainly is the most hated, most loathed man in the history of the world.
I wonder how Hitler's supporters felt when he was the most hated man. Did they realize they were supporting a monster? Were they proud to be contributing to his power? What about after Hitler fell, or Mussolini, or Idi Amin? Did their supporters realize what they'd helped to create? Did they stay loyal to their monsters? Did they see the light and experience regret? George is not the first ugly, planetary monster to be created. We should learn from his predecessors. Like dinosaur researchers, paleontologists, who study dinosaur shit, we should be studying the destroyed industries, the fraudulently justified actions and causes, the ecological disasters and the lies built upon lies and more lies that enabled Bush and his malignant predecessors to attain power. That way, at least we can begin to understand what enables a tiny fraction of the people on this planet to insanely ejaculate such loathsome creatures into such positions of destructive power upon our planet.
Like the puss in a pimple or infected wound, Bush is fulminating and the putrescent flesh surrounding this noxious crud-- Bush's Republican cronies-- is beginning to reject the toxic "substance." If a putrid infection is not treated soon enough, it may become gangrenous, killing the tissue around it. Bush is a disease that is highly toxic.
We see riots in France. Violent demonstrations following the path of Bush. The criminals, liars and thugs who represent the Bush administration and its supporters in congress should be facing serious protests. The right wing hate talk radio commentators should be jailed for echoing the right wing fascist government's lies. The protesters in Argentina have made clear, they don't hate Americans. They hate Bush and the Administration.
They hate the right wing Republican Theofascist, corporatist, Christianist extremists. Most of the world does. It's ironic that we can get help from the rest of the world to help take back America. ¶ 12:00 AM 0 comments links to this post
11.03.2005
Wal-Mart --"TWO THUMBS"
“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” deals with a lot the usual Wal-Mart criticisms – affects on small business, workers, unions, the environment and health care – but does so in a uniquely engaging way. By talking directly to mom and pop shops put out of businesses and interviewing a number of current and former Wal-Mart managers and workers, director Robert Greenwald effectively personalizes the struggle against the world’s largest corporation. His video
“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” is making Wal-Mart hot under the collar -- stay tuned for more! - ¶ 10:19 AM 0 comments links to this post
“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” is making Wal-Mart hot under the collar -- stay tuned for more! - ¶ 10:19 AM 0 comments links to this post
11.02.2005
World Can't Wait / Drive Out the Bush Regime
Students walk out -- march
against the Bush Regime
¶ 9:34 PM 0 comments
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against the Bush Regime
¶ 9:34 PM 0 comments
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World Can't Wait
1) 3:21 Mp3 radio speech ¶ 9:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Broadcasts
Higher Quality Audio files available info@prisonradio.org
Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal/Prison Radio
"Speech World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime"
Rec. 10-30-05
1) 3:21 Mp3 radio speech ¶ 9:15 PM 0 comments links to this post
10.21.2005
David Ray Griffin
This I know from hard experience. I have been championing the cautious, measured statements and appeals to pure sweet reason of the likes of David Griffin and Nafeez Ahmed for almost two years. Before I get into the alien death lizards thing, I guess I had better explain who Griffin and Ahmed are, for the benefit of those who have spent the past two years on the Planet of the Death Lizards, or on the even more distant and desolate planet of the American corporate media. David Griffin is one of America's most eminent Christian theologians, and he has recently published two books marshalling the abundant evidence that 9/11 was an inside job: The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 , and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Nafeez Ahmed is the brilliant young British scholar whose pathbreaking The War on Freedom convinced Gore Vidal that 9/11 was an inside job, and became Griffin's most important source for The New Pearl Harbor. Ahmed's new book The War on Truth goes on to show, with its formidable scholarly apparatus, that the whole specter of “Islamic Terrorism” is an illusion woven by Western intelligence agencies and their client-state proxies—the same conclusion reached by the recent BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares .
Griffin and Ahmed show, in clear, measured, scholarly fashion, that the official “19 hijackers” conspiracy theory of 9/11 is untenable, and that the alternative explanation that best fits the facts is that 9/11 was arranged by elements of the US intelligence apparatus, presumably acting at the behest of the US high command—namely George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. The presumable motive: To double the military budget overnight, increase the power of the executive branch, quash domestic dissent, and launch “the war that will not end in our lifetimes.”
After two years of promoting the books of Griffin and Ahmed, I have discovered that there is a limited audience for a rational, factual discussion of 9/11. Even those who accept the fairly obvious conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job often seem to prefer a more excited and imaginative prose style. As for those who do not accept that conclusion—in virtually all cases due to an emotionally-charged refusal to consider the evidence—they are addicted to an even more hysterical prose style driven by the paranoid delusion that a secret army of evil “Muslim extremists” is conspiring to wreak mayhem by randomly blowing things up.
The lesson here is that paranoid hysteria sells, while lucid reality-based analysis does not. Since I have a living to make, and children to feed, I have decided to leave reality-based conspiracy theory behind, and strike out boldly where no theorist has gone before: to the planet of the spacefaring death lizards.
But wait a moment, you ask. Just how do I know that Bush and Cheney are death lizards in disguise?
Because my wife says so, that's why. She has been telling me for years that George W. Bush is obviously an alien. His awkward artificial mannerisms, his peculiar mangling of the English language, his emotional insensitivity that borders on utter cluelessness—these are all signs, my wife says, that this guy does not possess a brain with the normal Chomskyan linguistic deep structure, not to mention the emotional-intelligence deep structure, common to all human beings. Instead, he seems vaguely reptilian—cruel, scaly and manipulative behind those dull, beady little eyes.
For years—I admit it—I did not listen to my wife. Indeed, I scoffed at her whenever she pointed out Bush's nonhuman characteristics. I told her that Bush was just a deeply disturbed, borderline-psychopathic rich kid in the throes of a really bad dry-drunk syndrome made worse by coke withdrawal. “No—he's an alien” was her invariable reply. For years neither one of us could convince the other. Then last year, during Bush's first debate with John Kerry, I watched in horror as the Lizard-in-Chief's left lower lip drooped halfway to the floor, twitching convulsively as the mannikin uttered clumsily alien words beamed through a highly visible remote control unit on its back. After witnessing that bizarre performance I could no longer deny it. Something was terribly the matter with the alleged humanoid in the Oval Office.
Then, while watching Cheney debate Edwards, I noticed that that the “Vice President” displayed some of the same non-human characteristics. Cheney's left lower lip corner, like Bush's, kept drooping downward and twitching spastically as cold, scaly, programmed words were emitted from the Cheney-creature's buccal orifice. Every pore of its body urged icy aggression; if it were capable of anything resembling emotion, it would be sheer contempt. Not the faintest shred of human warmth could be detected in its words, gestures, or bearing.
Suddenly it hit me: These guys were pursuing inhuman policies...because they were inhuman! My wife was right! (Not, she reminded me, for the first time.)
¶ 4:49 PM 1 comments links to this post
'Conspiracy Theorist' Asserts Bush and Cheney are Death Lizards from Outer Space!!!
Now it can be told: Bush and Cheney are not human beings at all, but death lizards from outer space.
This I know from hard experience. I have been championing the cautious, measured statements and appeals to pure sweet reason of the likes of David Griffin and Nafeez Ahmed for almost two years. Before I get into the alien death lizards thing, I guess I had better explain who Griffin and Ahmed are, for the benefit of those who have spent the past two years on the Planet of the Death Lizards, or on the even more distant and desolate planet of the American corporate media. David Griffin is one of America's most eminent Christian theologians, and he has recently published two books marshalling the abundant evidence that 9/11 was an inside job: The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 , and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Nafeez Ahmed is the brilliant young British scholar whose pathbreaking The War on Freedom convinced Gore Vidal that 9/11 was an inside job, and became Griffin's most important source for The New Pearl Harbor. Ahmed's new book The War on Truth goes on to show, with its formidable scholarly apparatus, that the whole specter of “Islamic Terrorism” is an illusion woven by Western intelligence agencies and their client-state proxies—the same conclusion reached by the recent BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares .
Griffin and Ahmed show, in clear, measured, scholarly fashion, that the official “19 hijackers” conspiracy theory of 9/11 is untenable, and that the alternative explanation that best fits the facts is that 9/11 was arranged by elements of the US intelligence apparatus, presumably acting at the behest of the US high command—namely George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. The presumable motive: To double the military budget overnight, increase the power of the executive branch, quash domestic dissent, and launch “the war that will not end in our lifetimes.”
After two years of promoting the books of Griffin and Ahmed, I have discovered that there is a limited audience for a rational, factual discussion of 9/11. Even those who accept the fairly obvious conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job often seem to prefer a more excited and imaginative prose style. As for those who do not accept that conclusion—in virtually all cases due to an emotionally-charged refusal to consider the evidence—they are addicted to an even more hysterical prose style driven by the paranoid delusion that a secret army of evil “Muslim extremists” is conspiring to wreak mayhem by randomly blowing things up.
The lesson here is that paranoid hysteria sells, while lucid reality-based analysis does not. Since I have a living to make, and children to feed, I have decided to leave reality-based conspiracy theory behind, and strike out boldly where no theorist has gone before: to the planet of the spacefaring death lizards.
But wait a moment, you ask. Just how do I know that Bush and Cheney are death lizards in disguise?
Because my wife says so, that's why. She has been telling me for years that George W. Bush is obviously an alien. His awkward artificial mannerisms, his peculiar mangling of the English language, his emotional insensitivity that borders on utter cluelessness—these are all signs, my wife says, that this guy does not possess a brain with the normal Chomskyan linguistic deep structure, not to mention the emotional-intelligence deep structure, common to all human beings. Instead, he seems vaguely reptilian—cruel, scaly and manipulative behind those dull, beady little eyes.
For years—I admit it—I did not listen to my wife. Indeed, I scoffed at her whenever she pointed out Bush's nonhuman characteristics. I told her that Bush was just a deeply disturbed, borderline-psychopathic rich kid in the throes of a really bad dry-drunk syndrome made worse by coke withdrawal. “No—he's an alien” was her invariable reply. For years neither one of us could convince the other. Then last year, during Bush's first debate with John Kerry, I watched in horror as the Lizard-in-Chief's left lower lip drooped halfway to the floor, twitching convulsively as the mannikin uttered clumsily alien words beamed through a highly visible remote control unit on its back. After witnessing that bizarre performance I could no longer deny it. Something was terribly the matter with the alleged humanoid in the Oval Office.
Then, while watching Cheney debate Edwards, I noticed that that the “Vice President” displayed some of the same non-human characteristics. Cheney's left lower lip corner, like Bush's, kept drooping downward and twitching spastically as cold, scaly, programmed words were emitted from the Cheney-creature's buccal orifice. Every pore of its body urged icy aggression; if it were capable of anything resembling emotion, it would be sheer contempt. Not the faintest shred of human warmth could be detected in its words, gestures, or bearing.
Suddenly it hit me: These guys were pursuing inhuman policies...because they were inhuman! My wife was right! (Not, she reminded me, for the first time.)
¶ 4:49 PM 1 comments links to this post
10.16.2005
The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute.
by Paul Thompson
$16.99 (2.3 lb) ¶ 7:06 PM 2 comments links to this post
10.15.2005
The World Can't Wait
Howard Zinn, Studs Terkel, Michael Eric Dyson, and Cornel West have now signed the Call.
World Can't Wait is on the homepage of Michael Moore's website.
World Can't Wait organizers spent the day at the Millions More March in DC, connecting with 10's of thousands of people and bringing forward new organizers for November 2nd.
Chicago World Can't Wait organizers join with others in protest against a conference of the Minutemen, a racist vigilante group hunting down immigrants at the border. Several protesters have been arrested, and the Minutemen conference was protected by police from 6 different precints!
3 students were arrested at Hunter College on Friday for doing street theatre dressed as torture victims. See the youth/student page for instructional video
¶ 7:55 PM 1 comments links to this post
NOVEMBER 2nd 2005
¶ 7:32 PM 0 comments
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The World Can't Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! |
6.08.2004
video catalogue description and price
name subject mins price
martin luther king archived material
scott ritter and the 911 families at riverside church
mrs.mariani speaks about her law suit and king george ¶ 5:20 PM 0 comments links to this post
martin luther king archived material
scott ritter and the 911 families at riverside church
mrs.mariani speaks about her law suit and king george ¶ 5:20 PM 0 comments links to this post
